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Take On Payments, a blog sponsored by the Retail Payments Risk Forum of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, is intended to foster dialogue on emerging risks in retail payment systems and enhance collaborative efforts to improve risk detection and mitigation. We encourage your active participation in Take on Payments and look forward to collaborating with you.

November 20, 2017

Webinar: Key Payment Events in 2017

This year has been an exciting one for the payments industry. Topics such as block chain and distributed ledger, card-not-present fraud, and chip-card migration continued to be in the news, and new subjects such as behavioral biometrics and machine learning/artificial intelligence made their way into the spotlight.

In the past, the Retail Payments Risk Forum team has coauthored a year-end post identifying what they believed to have been the major payment events of the year. This year, we are doing something a little bit different and hope you will like the change. Taking advantage of our new webinar series, Talk About Payments, the RPRF team will be sharing our perspectives through a round table discussion in a live webinar. We encourage financial institutions, retailers, payments processors, law enforcement, academia, and other payments system stakeholders to participate in this webinar. Participants will be able to submit questions during the webinar.

The webinar will be held on Thursday, December 14, from 1 to 2 p.m. (ET). Participation in the webinar is complimentary, but you must register in advance. To register, click on the TAP webinar link. After you complete your registration, you will receive a confirmation email with all the log-in and toll-free call-in information. A recording of the webinar will be available to all registered participants in various formats within a couple of weeks.

We look forward to you joining us on December 14 and sharing your perspectives on the major payment events that took place in 2017.

By David Lott, a payments risk expert in the Retail Payments Risk Forum at the Atlanta Fed

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July 28, 2017

Are Consumers Out of Touch?

According to the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC), 791 data breaches occurred in the first half of 2017, an increase of 29 percent over the first half of 2016. This rising incidence of data breaches is a continuation of a trend, as the 1,093 data breaches tracked by the ITRC in 2016 represented a 40 percent increase over breaches in 2015. As data breaches continue to proliferate, I would expect consumers to be very concerned that their payment credentials (credit, debit, and bank account numbers) are at risk of being compromised. Apparently, my expectations are a bit off, which is both puzzling and alarming.

In a just-released report on a survey conducted in May, Transaction Network Services found that only 46 percent of U.S. adults believe that a data breach may have exposed their credit or debit card information. In 2015, 60 percent of the respondents had that fear. So evidence exists that data breaches are on the rise, yet consumers have less fear today than they did in the past.

In its review of the 2017 data breaches, the ITRC found that only 13 percent resulted in the exposure of card data. However, this figure is up from 10 percent in 2016. Social Security numbers appear to be the prime target, with 60 percent of breaches exposing them. Small wonder, as this information is critical for committing identity theft. Why steal a card number when you can steal a Social Security number and apply for any number of credit cards?

I would like to think that, because the industry is making great strides in improving both transaction security, with initiatives such as EMV, and data security, with encryption and tokenization, consumers are feeling that their card data is more secure than it used to be. But the pessimist in me believes that consumers may be a bit naïve about the risks associated with data breaches, and may have also been inured by the proliferating occurrences. Or maybe because of limited liability protections, consumers just don’t care about their card data falling into the wrong hands from breaches. But now is not the time for consumers to drop their guard as data breaches—more specifically, breaches of card data—are on the rise. They must continue to take steps to protect themselves from falling victim to card breaches, such as keeping debit card PINs private and examining credit card and bank statements regularly for fraudulent transactions.

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February 27, 2017

Wouldn't It Be Nice to Tap and Pay?

In the mid-2000s, after setting up a new checking account following a move, I received a debit card that, in addition to the magnetic stripe, had contactless functionality. I remember thinking how "cool" this feature would be, not having to swipe the magnetic stripe but simply tapping the card on the point-of-sale (POS) terminal. However, I quickly became disappointed, as I couldn't use the tap functionality in most places that I shopped. In the few places that did allow for taps, I don't recall the tap ever working properly. After a few months, I never attempted to tap it again and reverted to the traditional swipe.

Fast forward to 2017, and contactless card usage is surging in the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada while remaining all but nonexistent in the United States. In November 2016, contactless cards accounted for nearly 25 percent of all card payments in the United Kingdom, up from 11 percent since November 2015. In Australia, Visa reported that 75 percent of face-to-face transactions over their network happen via their contactless solution. And in Canada, 99 percent of Mastercard's consumer credit cards are contactless-enabled. A 2016 report found that Canadian consumers were frustrated by merchants that didn't accept contactless payments. All of these countries have also gone through a migration of their payments cards to EMV chip cards. Did the United States miss a great opportunity when chip cards replaced the magnetic-stripe-only payment cards?

Interestingly, in these markets where contactless card adoption rates are surging, contactless cards are leading the contactless payment push ahead of mobile payments. In the United States, we are heading in the opposite direction, with mobile contactless attempting, and struggling, to get traction. No doubt, mobile is the more challenging environment, with a variety of form factors (iPhone, GalaxyS7, Pixel, and more), different ways that the form factor can interact with the POS terminal (such as near-field communication, magnetic source transmission, and barcode), and a variety of different wallets compatible with the different form factors. With a contactless card, you get one form factor—a card—and one method of contactless interaction. (Multiple-interface cards can still be swiped or dipped at the POS.)

I am convinced that the investments made in mobile contactless to this point are one of several factors holding up this country's transition to a contactless card environment. Consumers are confused by the experience and merchants and issuers are struggling with the wide range of options to consider, such as which wallets to enable and which technologies to support. Contactless cards have the ability to create a ubiquitous experience for both consumers and merchants. And this writer believes that a payment experience can't get any easier than a tap of the card.

It's hard for me to believe that it has been 20 years since I received my keychain Speedpass fob. I have positive memories of the simple and seamless transactions that I experienced when purchasing gas by touching the contactless fob to the gas pump reader. Unfortunately, I moved to a location with very few stations that accepted my fob. I always wished that I could have a similar experience for other purchases. Contactless cards allow for that and in a much easier and simpler fashion than my mobile phone allows. So can we get on with contactless cards? I am ready to tap and pay everywhere. Are you?

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January 9, 2017

The Year in Review

As we move into 2017, the Take on Payments team would like to share its perspectives of major payment-related events and issues that took place in the United States in 2016, in no particular order of importance.

Cybersecurity Moves to Forefront—While cyber protection is certainly not new, the increased frequency and sophistication of cyber threats in 2016 accelerated the need for financial services enterprises, businesses, and governmental agencies to step up their external and internal defenses with more staff and better protection and detection tools. The federal government released a Cybersecurity National Action Plan and established the Federal Chief Information Security Office position to oversee governmental agencies' management of cybersecurity and protection of critical infrastructure.

Same-Day ACH—Last September, NACHA's three-phase rules change took effect, mandating initially a credit-only same-day ACH service. It is uncertain this early whether NACHA will meet its expectations of same-day ACH garnering 1 percent of total ACH payment volume by October 2017. Anecdotally, we are hearing that some payments processors have been slow in supporting the service. Further clarity on the significance of same-day service will become evident with the addition of debit items in phase two, which takes effect this September.

Faster Payments—Maybe we're the only ones who see it this way, but in this country, "faster payments" looks like the Wild West—at least if you remember to say, "Howdy, pardner!" Word counts won't let us name or fully describe all of the various wagon trains racing for a faster payments land grab, but it seemed to start in October 2015 when The Clearing House announced it was teaming with FIS to deliver a real-time payment system for the United States. By March 2016, Jack Henry and Associates Inc. had joined the effort. Meanwhile, Early Warning completed its acquisition of clearXchange and announced a real-time offering in February. By August, this solution had been added to Fiserv's offerings. With Mastercard and Visa hovering around their own solutions and also attaching to any number of others, it seems like everybody is trying to make sure they don't get left behind.

Prepaid Card Account Rules—When it comes to compliance, "prepaid card" is now a misnomer based on the release of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's 2016 final ruling. The rule is access-device-agnostic, so the same requirements are applied to stored funds on a card, fob, or mobile phone app, to name a few. Prepaid accounts that are transactional and ready to use at a variety of merchants or ATMS, or for person-to-person, are now covered by Reg. E-Lite, and possibly Reg. Z, when overdraft or credit features apply. In industry speak, the rule applies to payroll cards, government benefit cards, PayPal-like accounts, and general-purpose reloadable cards—but not to gift cards, health or flexible savings accounts, corporate reimbursement cards, or disaster-relief-type accounts, for example.

Mobile Payments Move at Evolutionary, Not Revolutionary, Pace—While the Apple, Google, and Samsung Pay wallets continued to move forward with increasing financial institution and merchant participation, consumer usage remained anemic. With the retailer consortium wallet venture MCX going into hibernation, a number of major retailers announced or introduced closed-loop mobile wallet programs hoping to emulate the success of retailers such as Starbucks and Dunkin' Brands. The magic formula of payments, loyalty, and couponing interwoven into a single application remains elusive.

EMV Migration—The migration to chip cards and terminals in the United States continued with chip cards now representing approximately 70 percent of credit/debit cards in the United States. Merchant adoption of chip-enabled terminals stands just below 40 percent of the market. The ATM liability shift for Mastercard payment cards took effect October 21, with only an estimated 30 percent of non-FI-owned ATMs being EMV operational. Recognizing some of the unique challenges to the gasoline retailers, the brands pushed back the liability shift timetable for automated fuel dispensers three years, to October 2020. Chip card migration has clearly reduced counterfeit card fraud, but card-not-present (CNP) fraud has ballooned. Data for 2015 from the 2016 Federal Reserve Payments Study show card fraud by channel in the United States at 54 percent for in person and 46 percent for remote (or CNP). This is in contrast to comparable fraud data in other countries further along in EMV implementation, where remote fraud accounts for the majority of card fraud.

Distributed Ledger—Although venture capital funding in blockchain and distributed ledger startups significantly decreased in 2016 from 2015, interest remains high. Rather than investing in startups, financial institutions and established technology companies, such as IBM, shifted their funding focus to developing internal solutions and their technology focus from consumer-facing use cases such as Bitcoin to back-end clearing and settlement solutions and the execution of smart contracts.

Same Song, Same Verse—Some things just don't seem to change from year to year. Notifications of data breaches of financial institutions, businesses, and governmental agencies appear to have been as numerous as in previous years. The Fed's Consumer Payment Choices study continued to show that cash remains the most frequent payment method, especially for transactions under 10 dollars.

All of us at the Retail Payments Risk Forum wish all our Take On Payments readers a prosperous 2017.

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As is common in other countries, card fraud can be categorized as follows across person-present and remote payment channels:

Counterfeit card: Fraud is perpetrated using an altered or cloned card.

Lost or stolen card: Fraud is undertaken using a lost or stolen card.

Card issued but not received: A newly issued card in transit to a card holder is intercepted and used to commit fraud.

Fraudulent application: A new card is issued based on a fake identity or on someone else's identity.

Other: "Other" fraud includes account takeover and other types of fraud not covered above.

Fraudulent use of account number: Fraud is perpetrated without using a physical card.

An extract from the fraud section of the IDR shows breakouts for card fraud by type across five countries.

As reflected in the numbers, the United States continues to be by roughly an order of magnitude a continuing and persistent target for card counterfeiters using stolen card data compared to other countries that have adopted much earlier counterfeiting controls using EMV (chip) cards. Use of chips makes in-person card fraud more difficult, because of built-in technology to thwart the creation of counterfeit chip cards. As adoption of chips for cards and terminals improves in the United States, fraud using stolen card data is likely to shift from person-present to remote channels as has already occurred in other developed countries. My colleague, Doug King, discusses these issues in detail in an interview conducted last year.

Look for other Take On Payments posts that highlight additional key findings from the 2016 payments study.

By Steven Cordray, payments risk expert in the Retail Payments Risk Forum at the Atlanta Fed

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October 17, 2016

EMV Comments That Make Me Cringe

Some aspects of the chip card implementation in the United States certainly make us frustrated. For one, the customer experience could be seen as slightly more negative because of the longer transaction time and confusion about the debit card selection menu. However, at several payments conferences I have attended recently, I have heard comments made by speakers and panelists about EMV chip cards and their technology that caused me to cringe a bit. I understand that a number of stakeholders are not proponents of EMV technology for a variety of reasons and, while some parts of their comments are factually accurate, they certainly are not "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth."

Cringe #1: The United States is implementing 20-year-old-technology with EMV chip cards. Yes, the first EMV specifications were publicly released in 1995. But isn't that like saying that the gasoline-powered automobile is technology that is 130 years old? Microsoft's first release of Windows was in 1985. Do we hear complaints about it being 30-plus years old? The reality is that the EMV specifications, like practically all software development, are continually updated over the years with enhancements continuing as long as the software is still being supported. The EMV specifications are now at version 4.3, released in November 2011, with 20 supplemental bulletins issued since then and more on the way.

Cringe #2: EMV (chip) cards haven't solved the card-not-present (CNP) fraud problem. Again, this is an accurate statement. CNP card fraud is the second largest category of fraud losses in the U.S. (see the chart). But, the statement is misleading inasmuch as the EMV specifications and chip cards were never intended to address the CNP ecommerce environment. Counterfeit card fraud, whereby the criminal produces a card using data obtained from a skimmer or data breach, has been the number-one source of card-present fraud in the United States. It was this type of card fraud that the chip card was designed to target, and, from all accounts to date, it has been highly successful in doing so.

Cringe #3 – Using a PIN improves the security of the chip card. While a cardholder using a PIN in lieu of a signature does clearly result in a lower level of fraud losses, the claim is somewhat of an apples and oranges comparison. The chip on the card authenticates the card itself, while the use of a PIN is intended to authenticate the cardholder performing the transaction. These are two separate types of authentication which, when combined, make the transaction more secure—a good thing. The use of a PIN should result in lower lost/stolen card fraud as it invokes two-factor authentication—something you have (card) and something you know (PIN).

Are the current EMV specifications perfect? Of course not, and that is why there are constant efforts to identify ways to improve them. But one must recall that the EMV specifications provide global interoperability and must be developed keeping that requirement in mind. What are your thoughts on the EMV specifications and how they can be improved?

By David Lott, a payments risk expert in the Retail Payments Risk Forum at the Atlanta Fed

Comments

Good stuff, Dave; I fully agree with your first 2 cringes, but on the third I think the objection is that if minimizing fraud is so important, why would we not complete the process of requiring PIN and take security to the next logical step?

Of course this opens up plenty of other debates- consumer choice, merchant fee levels, etc.- but thought it would be helpful to clarify that point in hopes of advancing the dialogue.

Hello Dave,
While I agree with much that you have written.
The EMV specification has not kept pace with modern needs. The Target breach was the catalyst for the US implementation of EMV. Yet the current implementation of EMV would not have prevented the breach. The chip card exposes the static, clear text Primary Account Number (PAN) and other Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in numerous places. It does not cryptographically protect the sensitive data. To match our current needs, the cryptographic and computational power of the chip should be harnessed to protect the PAN and the PII. Or better yet, remove the PAN and PII from the chip card entirely.
The card is a physical token which should represent the PAN, but not expose it. The PAN should remain inside the Financial Institution (FI) linked to various tokens, each of which has a Device ID. The physical token should be authenticated without revealing the PAN to the merchant or a payment intermediary. Once the token (the Card or other access device) has been authenticated by the Issuer, it can look up the corresponding account and move (or not move) the funds accordingly.
When the card is capable of protecting itself, it can be issued, secured and validated by the issuer without the need for any intermediaries (consumers, merchants, processors, acquirers, networks) to participate in the protection process. With a proper chip card specification, this can be accomplished while maintaining global interoperability.
Respectfully,
Mimi Hart, MagTek

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May 16, 2016

Improving Customer Authentication: Is the PIN Past Its Prime?

The Financial Fraud Action UK recently released its Year-End 2015 Fraud Update. This report, filled with fraud-related figures from a fully EMV(chip)-migrated country, provides insight into what the future of fraud in the United States might look like as we are approximately eight months into our EMV journey. And if indeed the United Kingdom’s experience is a harbinger of things to come in the United States, then I think there will be disappointment for anyone who thought EMV by itself would be a magic bullet. After I spent time studying this report, it became evident that customer authentication is the latest low-hanging fruit and fraudsters are having a feast.

Fraud losses on payment cards in the United Kingdom (£567.5m) are approaching pre-EMV migration levels, and fraud loss rates have increased above 8 basis points (0.08%), hitting a level last seen in 2009. Diving deeper, we find that:

Lost and stolen card fraud (remember, the United Kingdom is a PIN environment) increased more than 24 percent in 2015, reaching levels last seen in 2006. The report highlights distraction thefts through cameras or simply shoulder surfing as methods of fraudulently obtaining PINs.

Card ID theft fraud losses, defined as losses from spend on fraudulently opened or obtained cards through stolen personal information, increased by 28 percent and are now approaching counterfeit card levels.

A bit of good news is that counterfeit card fraud losses remain well below pre-EMV levels and fell even further in 2015—perhaps, as the report suggests, driven partly by the increased acceptance of EMV cards in the United States.

Beyond cards, remote banking fraud losses (losses from Internet, telephone, and mobile banking) increased by more than 134 percent during the last two years, totaling nearly £169 million.

EMV is performing exactly as expected and doing a phenomenal job of authenticating payment cards in the card-present environment. Why are fraud losses increasing in a mature EMV environment? Because customer authentication remains a challenge, as is evident by rising fraud losses from lost and stolen cards, card applications with stolen identities, and remote banking.

Whether on the front end of authenticating the user during the account opening process or the back end of authenticating the user at the time of payment, authentication measures are coming up short, and these measures include PINs and passwords. Replacing passwords has been an ongoing conversation and likely may continue to be a conversation piece rather than a prolific action item. Yet there is a growing push for the use of PINs coupled with EMV cards here in the United States. While PIN authentication is an improvement over signature authentication, it, too, has its flaws. With improvements and advancements in new technologies such as biometrics, perhaps it's time for the industry to advance beyond PINs. Because of the current signature-laden EMV environment in the U.S., the timing is perfect.

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February 22, 2016

2016 Payment Predictions

In our 2015 year-end review, we promised we would provide some predictions and expectations for payments in the United States during 2016. Predictions are usually pretty…unpredictable, so by waiting a couple of months to release ours, we're hoping they will end up being more accurate than usual. Disclaimer: These predictions are through the collective wisdom of the Retail Payments Risk Forum staff and do not reflect the opinions of the Federal Reserve System or the Board of Governors. So here we go in no particular order or probability of happening.

Cyberattacks will be the top threat to payments security: Cyberattacks and data breaches will be as robust as ever and will be the number one threat in the payments ecosystem. As retailers and financial service companies strengthen their defenses, the Risk Forum predicts that hackers will widen their focus.

This will be the year for mobile point-of-service (POS) payments…not!: Like the broken analog clock face that is correct twice a day, we believe that those forecasting 2016 as the "year of mobile payments" (as they did in 2013, 2014, and 2015) will be a little bit right, but will still be waiting for this optimistic prediction to be fully true. While the adoption pace of mobile payments is growing because of the increasing influence of millennials, the issues of limited merchant acceptance points, fragmentation, and consumer concerns over security and privacy will remain as substantial hurdles. Major educational efforts will be launched stressing the increased security provided by mobile payments through tokenization and biometrics.

EMV (chip card) POS migration will pick up the pace from 2015: The liability shift for POS took place October 1, 2015, and projections for both card and terminal capability missed their optimistic marks for a variety of reasons. Credit and debit card reissuance will continue during 2016 and should reach significant conversion levels by the end of the year. The Risk Forum expects the pace of merchant terminal conversions to pick up as certifications are completed and merchants targeted by counterfeit card fraudsters feel the sting of losses. However, we also think some merchant categories, such as restaurants, will continue to proceed at a tepid pace.

ACH same-day service will not be a huge hit: The Risk Forum forecasts that the roll-out of NACHA's mandated same-day ACH service in September will, at least initially, have modest adoption because corporate originators will have to update internal systems to support faster payments, the dollar cap of $25,000 per payment, and the imposition of the interbank fee. Consumer payment applications will have modest uptake due to competing payment alternatives.

EMV ATM liability shift will cause the number of ATMs to shrink: The implementation of chip card readers in ATMs will follow the same pattern as POS terminals did in 2015—the large ATM owners and operators will meet the October 2016 deadline but many of the small and mid-sized operators, especially those owned by nonfinancial institutions, will not and will be faced with absorbing the loss of transactions made with counterfeit cards—a fraud loss they haven't experienced in the past. Overall, the Risk Forum looks for the ATM base in the U.S. to contract by 10 to 15 percent because of financial institution mergers and the cost of EMV upgrades.

Mobile wallet space will continue to see turbulence: 2015 saw the launch or announcement of more mobile wallets by payment stakeholders such as Samsung, Google, Chase, Capital One, Walmart, and Target. Then add the retailer and credit union consortiums (MCX CurrentC and CU Wallet) that are struggling to emerge from uncertainty. How many wallets will the consumer be willing to load on a phone and which providers do they trust to keep their payments and banking credentials safe? We believe we'll see continued turbulence in this space during 2016, with some settling of the dust by next year.

Blockchain technology interest will accelerate: Cryptocurrencies will continue to exist in the "novelty" space, but we think large payments players will direct efforts to leveraging the distributed ledger technology for various uses and will proceed at an accelerated pace.

Biometric technology improves, but passwords remain supreme: Despite continued cries for intervention, the user ID and password will remain the primary authentication method that consumers use to access their various applications. Biometrics technology for payment and customer authentication applications will continue to improve while decreasing in price. Fingerprint, facial recognition, and eye/iris recognition will dominate as the most-used biometrics although voice recognition will serve as a key method in certain environments such as call centers. The Risk Forum believes that the technology will continue to face critical adoption challenges due to concerns about privacy, security, and safety, but educational programs will lower this resistance.